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Navigation of a rainmaker
It is a place where humans may scratch an existence - until the rains fail. Then the people must go to the towns, and an age-old, elemental way of life confronts a newer society, one that strives to be part of the modern world but is itself built on shifting sand. Tanner is a stranger in this, his father's land, Sudan. He travelled here from his mother's arid England in search of some kind of fulfilment, but now he is stranded in the stagnant pool of Khartoum, a silent witness to the suffering around him. The current of his life quickens with the arrival of a mysterious American, who may be technocrat or terrorist. With him Tanner travels south, into the heart of the desert, where there is no more room for compromise...
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First published July 1, 1989
72 people want to read
About the author
Jamal Mahjoub
23 books46 followersAka Parker Bilal
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London in 1960. After living in Liverpool for several years, the family moved to Sudan, his father’s home country. Mahjoub attended Comboni College, run by Italian priests. He subsequently received a grant from Atlantic College in , and continued his studies in geology at the university of Sheffield. While still a student he began publishing his literary texts in magazines. After several changes of location, northern Europe eventually became his home base – yet his African roots still play a central role in his books. They incorporate stories and history, science and superstition and at the same time discuss the living conditions in which people from different backgrounds live together or in close proximity with each other.
»In the Hour of Signs« (1996) tells the story of the British conquest of at the end of the 19th century. The book transforms both protagonists of the conflict, the Muslim leader Mohammed Ahmed, called Mahdi, and the English General Gordon into symbolic figures. The main characters are farmers, shepherds or simple soldiers, and the uprising is described from their perspective as country dwellers or representatives of the colonial power. Mahjoub’s historical novel »The Carrier« (1998) deals with one of the pivotal moments in European thought: the development of the telescope and the corresponding astronomical methods of calculation, which paved the way for the heliocentric view of the world and the separation of science and religion. Mahjoub described his motivation: »I was fascinated by the question of why such a significant change in thought as marked by the Renaissance in Europe, didn’t occur in the Islamic world.« The young scholar Rashid al-Kenzy, son of a Nubian slave and falsely accused of murder, is reprieved by the dey of Algiers on condition that Rashid procure him the optical device, of whose capabilities people tell the most wondrous tales – and thus Rashid sets out on a long journey. In 2006 Majoub published his novel »Nubian Indigo«, whose story is set during the construction of the Aswan High Dam. »The Drift Latitudes« (2007) has present-day London as its setting. A successful architect, daughter of an immigrant from Trinidad and a German father whom she can hardly remember, receives several letters from her half-sister in , which cause her to begin to deal with her background.
The author has been awarded the Prix d’Astrobale for the novel »Travelling with Djinns« (2003) and the Guardian/Heinemann African Short Story Prize. After spending many years in the Danish city of Aarhus, Mahjoub is now living in Barcelona.
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London in 1960. After living in Liverpool for several years, the family moved to Sudan, his father’s home country. Mahjoub attended Comboni College, run by Italian priests. He subsequently received a grant from Atlantic College in , and continued his studies in geology at the university of Sheffield. While still a student he began publishing his literary texts in magazines. After several changes of location, northern Europe eventually became his home base – yet his African roots still play a central role in his books. They incorporate stories and history, science and superstition and at the same time discuss the living conditions in which people from different backgrounds live together or in close proximity with each other.
»In the Hour of Signs« (1996) tells the story of the British conquest of at the end of the 19th century. The book transforms both protagonists of the conflict, the Muslim leader Mohammed Ahmed, called Mahdi, and the English General Gordon into symbolic figures. The main characters are farmers, shepherds or simple soldiers, and the uprising is described from their perspective as country dwellers or representatives of the colonial power. Mahjoub’s historical novel »The Carrier« (1998) deals with one of the pivotal moments in European thought: the development of the telescope and the corresponding astronomical methods of calculation, which paved the way for the heliocentric view of the world and the separation of science and religion. Mahjoub described his motivation: »I was fascinated by the question of why such a significant change in thought as marked by the Renaissance in Europe, didn’t occur in the Islamic world.« The young scholar Rashid al-Kenzy, son of a Nubian slave and falsely accused of murder, is reprieved by the dey of Algiers on condition that Rashid procure him the optical device, of whose capabilities people tell the most wondrous tales – and thus Rashid sets out on a long journey. In 2006 Majoub published his novel »Nubian Indigo«, whose story is set during the construction of the Aswan High Dam. »The Drift Latitudes« (2007) has present-day London as its setting. A successful architect, daughter of an immigrant from Trinidad and a German father whom she can hardly remember, receives several letters from her half-sister in , which cause her to begin to deal with her background.
The author has been awarded the Prix d’Astrobale for the novel »Travelling with Djinns« (2003) and the Guardian/Heinemann African Short Story Prize. After spending many years in the Danish city of Aarhus, Mahjoub is now living in Barcelona.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 9, 2018
You know what you are in for from the subtitle: “An apocalyptic vision of war-torn Africa.” Set in the 1980’s Sudan.
The book is structured, more or less, in alternating chapters between the city and the countryside. In the latter an extended family is moving with their dying goats and camels toward a relief site. Rebels try to steal their livestock while MIG jets fly overhead bombing villages. There is drought, dust storms, starvation and violence.
Is the city any better? No. Constant power outages, nightly curfews where if you don’t stop for the police they simply machine-gun your car. Potholes so big the city tells residents to fill them with bricks and cover them with dirt. Beggars and lepers; a gang of homeless kids living off garbage heaps. Street ditches used as toilets. Flies. The hospital is overrun with feral cats.
The city is Khartoum at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. So city vs. countryside is a theme as is North and South, two subsections of the book. These relates to the division of the country into an Arab-Muslim north and an African-Christian-pagan south.
The man character is a young man (age 26) who grew up in England with a British mother and a Sudanese father. His parents are separated and when he tells his father, whom he hardly ever sees, that he feels drawn to go to the Sudan, the father thinks he’s crazy to leave the comforts and opportunities of Britain. The son is the type where when he arrives in the Sudan, a colleague says to him “Your solitary disdain and your detachment will not save you.”
In Sudan he works for an oil exploration corporation taking trips out to the boondocks where the rebels may attack the geologists. In the city he has a woman friend but also a special prostitute that he visits.
He feels responsible for a vehicle accident that killed a young woman geologist because he was in charge of the trucks. “All the trucks had names; bastard machines spawned from imported engine cabs and spare parts, put together with a skill born from intuitive desperation.”
A secondary character comes on the scene – a black American, ostensibly an oil corporation employee, but who may be a CIA type as he seems more interested in playing the dangerous game of tracking the rebels rather than the oil. Like our main character, he too seems to have come to Africa to search for something in his ancestral past. The main character of mixed race feels that he doesn’t fit into either his home or his adopted country. The American tells him “You don’t fit in because you don’t want to fit it, because it makes you feel special.” And “Your empathy for the people of this country is nothing but an empty-headed dream.”
There’s some good writing:
“She had forgotten to close the door behind her and it stood open like an unfinished sentence.”
“The map of the Sudan looked like a face, the face of a man gazing down; the face of a man in mourning.”
The young nouveau riche were “lucky to be where they were, when outside through the air-conditioned windows poverty crawled on its knees through the urine and the dirt.”
It all ends in tragedy of course.
We assume the work is semi-autobiographical. Like the main character, the author had a British mother and Sudanese father and after spending his early childhood in England, his family moved the Sudan where he attended college and majored in geology.
I thought it was a good read and for a short book there is a lot packed into it and a lot of action, so it’s never dull.
Top: photo of conflict in Sudan in 2013 from trtworld.com
Middle: modern Khartoum from travel-destinations.com
Photo of the author from theguardian.com
The book is structured, more or less, in alternating chapters between the city and the countryside. In the latter an extended family is moving with their dying goats and camels toward a relief site. Rebels try to steal their livestock while MIG jets fly overhead bombing villages. There is drought, dust storms, starvation and violence.
Is the city any better? No. Constant power outages, nightly curfews where if you don’t stop for the police they simply machine-gun your car. Potholes so big the city tells residents to fill them with bricks and cover them with dirt. Beggars and lepers; a gang of homeless kids living off garbage heaps. Street ditches used as toilets. Flies. The hospital is overrun with feral cats.
The city is Khartoum at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. So city vs. countryside is a theme as is North and South, two subsections of the book. These relates to the division of the country into an Arab-Muslim north and an African-Christian-pagan south.
The man character is a young man (age 26) who grew up in England with a British mother and a Sudanese father. His parents are separated and when he tells his father, whom he hardly ever sees, that he feels drawn to go to the Sudan, the father thinks he’s crazy to leave the comforts and opportunities of Britain. The son is the type where when he arrives in the Sudan, a colleague says to him “Your solitary disdain and your detachment will not save you.”
In Sudan he works for an oil exploration corporation taking trips out to the boondocks where the rebels may attack the geologists. In the city he has a woman friend but also a special prostitute that he visits.
He feels responsible for a vehicle accident that killed a young woman geologist because he was in charge of the trucks. “All the trucks had names; bastard machines spawned from imported engine cabs and spare parts, put together with a skill born from intuitive desperation.”
A secondary character comes on the scene – a black American, ostensibly an oil corporation employee, but who may be a CIA type as he seems more interested in playing the dangerous game of tracking the rebels rather than the oil. Like our main character, he too seems to have come to Africa to search for something in his ancestral past. The main character of mixed race feels that he doesn’t fit into either his home or his adopted country. The American tells him “You don’t fit in because you don’t want to fit it, because it makes you feel special.” And “Your empathy for the people of this country is nothing but an empty-headed dream.”
There’s some good writing:
“She had forgotten to close the door behind her and it stood open like an unfinished sentence.”
“The map of the Sudan looked like a face, the face of a man gazing down; the face of a man in mourning.”
The young nouveau riche were “lucky to be where they were, when outside through the air-conditioned windows poverty crawled on its knees through the urine and the dirt.”
It all ends in tragedy of course.
We assume the work is semi-autobiographical. Like the main character, the author had a British mother and Sudanese father and after spending his early childhood in England, his family moved the Sudan where he attended college and majored in geology.
I thought it was a good read and for a short book there is a lot packed into it and a lot of action, so it’s never dull.
Top: photo of conflict in Sudan in 2013 from trtworld.com
Middle: modern Khartoum from travel-destinations.com
Photo of the author from theguardian.com
October 20, 2025
This is the first novel I've read from British Sudanese author. The story is set in Sudan seen from the perspective of a British Sudanese "tourist" working in a company in Kharthoum. The author gives a realistic overview of the country and its problems. However, it lacks in depth description of the people. Readers feel that the book was written by an outsider and the author does not really hide it.
August 13, 2010
This was an interesting novel that gives the reader an insight into the realities of a war-torn country suffering from poverty, famine and drought. It made me want to learn more about the Sudan, a country I knew hardly anything about, and I would definitely read it again.
March 12, 2010
the second half is good, but by the time I got to it I cared less than I should have - his first-novel prose is underwhelming while all the exposition is happening.
June 19, 2020
Its a great read, though having a sad ending.
January 9, 2024
this is a required book for writing my phd in arts. R#
March 19, 2010
Mahjoub’s first three novels, Caroline A Mohsen points out, “emulate the turmoil and uncertainty of Sudan” (541). In Navigation of a Rainmaker, the main character, Tanner, is a lost soul, part Arab Sudanese, part British, who finally asserts himself by killing a mercenary-type American who has come to Sudan in the early 1980s to stimulate instability, rather than work towards peace. The American's moment of revelation is a powerful statement of neo-colonial goals in Africa: “I am here to instill confusion, to sow the seeds of discontent” (168). He taunts Tanner, “you’re not the type to act” (169). Faced with roughly the same challenge as the narrator of Season—to act or not to act—Tanner kills the American but is wounded in the skirmish. His last thoughts before dying turn to his sense of purpose—he wants to know if he made a difference, if anyone noticed (183-84). But the novel makes it clear that Tanner’s actions were too late, and that the cycles of violence will continue. The novel is prophetically dark, written during the first few years of what would become a 22-year civil war.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2016
SUDAN
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews